Will someone explain to me when did Koei and Game Freak get married and decided to produce the off-spring known as Pokemon Conquest. Imagine my surprise walking about GameStop and noticing a very familiar looking Nobunaga Oda and Shingen Takeda staring back at me from a box that clearly says "POKEMON".

B/W 2 junk to talk about. Read if you want, but spoilers below (all game related, no plot spoilers). I've played through twice now, and come to several gameplay conclusions in team developments.

Spoiler :

Just putting this out there right now, but Magnemite and its evolution are basically one way tickets to beating the entire damn game in B/W 2. SO overpowered to have it so early and next to a poison gym that it resists massively and only has tackle to compensate. Leveling is easy early on. From there, it can be fully evolved thanks to the electric cave, or Evolited in Magneton form for a small boost in defense (although I don't know why anyone would do that....). Joltik did ok, but Magnemite's forms far outclassed it by a lot. Mareep is available VERY early, but Magnemite (again) vastly outclasses it.

Axew is fun, especially given the new champion's powerful dragons, but it still has the same nagging high level evolutions. Still, the lack of a good ice type means it's one of the few options to take on Iris. Almost a must have. My first play-through without it was much more difficult come that battle.

Lucario, on the other hand, was a massive dissapointment. It just did not do well in ANY of the gyms past the first one, and its lack of a good fighting move until LATE game is just sad. Next playthrough (#3), it gets dumped. However, Scraggy remains *very* useful with it's amazing dual types and insane attack.

N's Zorua you get early on is great for the bonus experience and is a nice dark type. I love its ability. :3 Still, scraggy is still the better option in my opinion, for the dual coverage.

Growlithe massively over-classes Tepig in the long run. I abandoned the damn pig thing nearly 3 gyms in. However, like in the last game, Darumaka and Darmanitan are just so good that it's almost an uber class fire type for the game. ESPECIALLy given the insane amount of high leveled steel type pokemon you will face repeatedly.

Like in the last game, *useful* water types are few and far in between. Oshawott is (sadly) one of the few good options until much later in the game. You can get access to Azumarill early on, but it's just not as useful and takes forever to become a competent team member.

You can snag it from Castelia City's new Central Park (with eevee!). The problem I have with Cottonee is that it's basically just a support pokemon (which you really don't need in-game and can overkill at times like Bulbasaur in generation one) and just doesn't have the useful STAB behind it like Petilil does. Besides, it's quiver dance accessible that isn't a bug! XD

Although I do like Whimsicott. Especially in B/W 1 when you c an snag one via in-game trade and get the bonus exp. THAT was a good playthrough.

Who says you can't use competitive movesets in an in-game playthrough, though? Whimsicott is possibly the best subseeder ever, and that's a viable tactic in-game, and endeavor is just as useful as always too. Perhaps encore isn't nearly as useful in-game, nor is taunt, but that's possibly for the better since it leaves space for something like stun spore or toxic, or perhaps giga drain so if you're against the magic guard oddball you can still do something that isn't just switching out (which might be the better choice in such a situation, though). All in all I've successfully used Cottonee and Whimsicott even in in-game BW, not just competitively, and it can kill anything if you play it well. Prankster is just that useful...Though I admit the fact that it's one of my fave pokémon doesn't help, but you wouldn't imagine how effective it's to just set up a leech seed and then stall out the opponent even in-game, can save you in situations when you don't know what to do. Especially nice to have it when the opponent starts spamming double team or minimize... at that point the possibilty to deal indirect damage continuously just saves you if you don't have a "can't miss" move at hand (I've had this happen to me in BW, especially with those pesky wild emolga...).

mirkosp wrote:Who says you can't use competitive movesets in an in-game playthrough, though? Whimsicott is possibly the best subseeder ever, and that's a viable tactic in-game, and endeavor is just as useful as always too. Perhaps encore isn't nearly as useful in-game, nor is taunt, but that's possibly for the better since it leaves space for something like stun spore or toxic, or perhaps giga drain so if you're against the magic guard oddball you can still do something that isn't just switching out (which might be the better choice in such a situation, though). All in all I've successfully used Cottonee and Whimsicott even in in-game BW, not just competitively, and it can kill anything if you play it well. Prankster is just that useful...

Oh no, I didn't mean you can't or shouldn't, i just meant that it's personally abusive for me to play it that way with pokemon that battle that way. This is because I know I can abuse the opponent AI to such a terrible degree with it, and I'm well aware of how powerful it can be.

While I do love finding the strongest pokemon and level grind till the cows come home, I do enjoy some challenge in my pokemon games.

Which reminds me that I need to do my Farfetched/Luvdisc run at some point.